Monday, February 7, 2011

The X-Fire Game: Rifted at the Super Bowl

This weeks post is brought to you by the letters R. I. F. T. and those little things called "Touchdowns".

Thats right, this past weekend was a large Rift beta weekend. Massive numbers of keys were sent out, pre-order keys galore, and the added bonus of some key sets allowing 100 invites per code. Thats not all, as the Super Bowl cranked up the heat on game playing; a male dominated gaming world was diluted by that male dominated television event.

So, how can two such events like these affect various games on the charts, and then how does Rift itself rank? Lets find out.

X-FIRE

Rift - 2755 (INTRO) players

Aion- 1874 (2131↓ )

Lord of the Rings Online - 1813 (2524 ↓ )

EvE Online - 1776 (2415↓ )

Champions Online - 724 (1458)

Dungeons & Dragons Online - 338 (421 ↓ )

Star Trek Online - 371 ( 385 ↓ )

DC Universe - 316 (INTRO)

Age of Conan - 214 (290 ↓ )

Warhammer Online - 133 (240 ↓ )

Final Fantasy XIV - 111 (130 ↓ )

What an interesting chart. ALL games were way down. Thank you Super Bowl.

Check out Rift though. What a great entrance into the charts on X-Fire. Number one with a bullet. Seems football could not keep a majority of gamers out of at least trying it. I think this will be a telling sign, and I expect the launch of Rift to be one of the largest in recent MMO history (previous launches have had Warhammer Online at #4 and Age of Conan and Aion at #5 on X-Fire, yet falling immensely in the following month).

What a bizarre twist though. Thanks to this past weekends football extravaganza, Aion was able to move ahead of EvE and LOTRO. Odd, but not unprecedented (as we had seen previously thanks to the FFXIV polls... Europe loves Aion more than North America... you know, who happen to love Football probably MUCH more than Europeans). Seeing that most Euros were probably NOT watching the Super Bowl, I think we know who to thank for Aion's success here.

Champions Online's fall, though large, was to be expected, and until next week, we will not know how Free to Play is helping overall. Should see some stabilizing numbers soon. The drop, though large, should see better results next week.

DC Universe finally intros this week to X-Fire...but, to some rather shocking numbers. I am not sure how the X-Fire software works, and if it will re-recognize games or not when updates take place, unless you force it. DCUO just seems rather low, almost like it may not notice a majority of players. Hopefully this will rectify itself next week.

Warhammer Online is still seeing a disturbing trend. Now, even though we cannot tell much from this weeks chart, it seems to have lost a good share of players compared to it's companion game, Age of Conan. I am expecting a MASSIVE drop come Rift launch, but, the fact that this past week Mythic announced free transfer off servers and an eventual "retirement" (their wording) of several servers...this is still not boding well for this flailing MMO.

.....

Raptr, as we saw last week, was not as affected by the mid week Rift event as X-Fire seemed to be this weekend beta. Even though the first day had good numbers (about 700+ players started), the following days fell down. It was a weekday beta though.

Now, how will this NEW event, which was weekend based, help Rifts chances on Raptr?

RAPTR

DC Universe - 732 (1256 ↓ ) players

EvE Online - 684 (1151 ↓ )

Lord of the Rings Online - 661 (799 ↓ )

Champions Online - 500 (1231 ↓ )

Aion - 484 (554 ↓ )

Rift - 243 (INTRO)

Dungeons & Dragons Online - 240 (241 ↓ )

Final Fantasy XIV - 156 (216 ↓ )

Star Trek Online - 140 (121↑ )

Age of Conan - 85 (119 ↓ )

Warhammer Online - 57 (94 ↓ )

Raptr shows certain games falling massively (EvE losing roughly 40%) and Champions taking a dive. Still weird how there seems to be some major discrepancies between Raptr and X-Fire. but, it does allow us to see some nice variations, so lets take a look.

I did expect loss in Champions and DC Universe. As they continue to find their sweet spot on the charts due to their relative changes (going F2P and being new, respectively). Hopefully in another week or two we should see how successful these games are.

The only game up? Star Trek Online. Just like in high school, all the sci-fi nerds never really liked football anyways (me being one of those...lol). Yet, when I say that, we MUST look at EvE's strange drop. I really did not expect such a huge loss. So, unless there was an outage I am not aware of, EvE's numbers seemed to have the oddest loss here.

Rift enters the chart respectively, but could have been better. My money though is on a lot of players, like myself, that are avoiding the game and wanting it to be fresh for launch. I do expect launch to be huge for this title as well on the Raptr rankings.

Just like on X-Fire, WAR took a noticeable dive. AoC, the companion game to WAR did not seem to get hurt too much. As I mentioned last week, WAR needs to be watched. I expect a lot of pain for this game, and no matter how you cut it...the ongoing discussion of profitability that people throw up, that Mythic announced last year, may need to be questioned now. Guess closing servers is one way to help in that respect...good thing they are shutting down quite a few.
.....

Wow. Talk about some massive drops thanks to the Super Bowl. Not unexpected. But, I have to say, the big winner here was Rift on X-Fire and STO on Raptr. They really pulled through, even with such a big event like the Bowl.

Next week: Back to normalcy...and hopefully some better views of DC Universe and Champions Online.

(PS: I will skip the Game of the Week that I do for games I do not track, due to the massive losses due to the Super Bowl. Watch for that next week.)